Our aim is to enhance and restore the Kororoit Creek corridor.

Mission

Our mission is to undertake activities that protect and enhance the environment and habitat corridor along the Kororoit Creek. We seek to involve, inspire and empower our local community.

About us

The Friends of Kororoit Creek are an active group of volunteers working on a range of activities which aim to improve the health of the Kororoit Creek and its surrounds in the Brimbank area.

With things such as Climate Change, deforestation, pollution and land clearing having a negative effect on the environment, working with the FOKC is a great way to try to combat these things by thinking globally but acting locally. It is also heaps of fun!

Activities include plantings during the cooler months, maintenance of new and older planting sites, group working bees at designated work sites, working with schools, Waterwatch, social gatherings and informal walks along the Kororoit Creek trail. Re-vegetation and maintenance activities are currently carried out from Isabella Williams Reserve in Deer Park downstream to Buckingham Reserve in Sunshine West.

In 2018 we planted 16,500 plants and spent 7000 hours working on the creek.

A brief history

The traditional custodians of the land surrounding the creek are the Wurundjeri people who had hunted, fished and camped along the creek for thousands of years. Aboriginal occupation of Kororoit Creek and the surrounding area is evident in the form of many scattered artifacts along the Creek. Scar trees, where canoes were carved from the bark of the red gums, are dotted along the Creek. Fish traps and bird traps are also evident to the trained observer.

European explorers, James Flemming and Charles Grimes identified the Kororoit Creek in 1803.

One possible derivation for the name “Kororoit” is thought to come from an Aboriginal word meaning “male kangaroo”. A second possibility is that it was derived from the Aboriginal name for the district encompassing the now City of Hobsons Bay, “Koort Boork“, meaning “She Oak”.

The Kororoit Creek was referred to as “Tee Tree Creek” by the settlers who arrived after Wedge in 1835. This name reflects the kind of shrubbery (leptospermum obvatum – woolly tea tree) which lined its banks in those days.

Kororoit Creek is of scientific interest as a classic example of creek formation over a basalt plain, with the geomorphology of the Creek varying along its length.

The underlying bedrock is three to four hundred million years old and consists of Silurian marine claystones, siltstones and sandstones. Superimposed on the bedrock are volcanic basalt lava flows which are hard, dense grey basalts of the late Oligocene age. Overlying the earlier lava flows are the more recent basaltic lava flows of the Pliocene and Pleistocene era, which form the dominant surface geology.

The primary vegetation type upstream of Kororoit Creek Road, for the length of Kororoit Creek, is a combination of Western Plains grassland, escarpment vegetation and riparian scrub along the watercourses.

Western Plains grasslands were dominated in the past by Kangaroo Grass. The escarpment vegetation included Sweet Bursaria, Tree Violet and Blackwoods. The Riparian woodlands were dominated by red gum, with scattered shrubs and a range of grassy wetland plants on the alluvial flats.